Quorum Court Justice of the Peace David Ivy proposed the amendment, which would have added a section to the ordinance stating “Employees hired ... to fill the positions specifically stated, shall not be transferred to other frozen positions not specifically addressed in this section or to other departments without Quorum Court approval.”

Ivy said he requested the amendment after becoming aware of a situation within the Sheriff’s Department where a person hired as a jailer was then transferred to work in a clerical position, which he felt should have been approved by the Quorum Court. Essential positions, such as jailers, are not affected by the hiring freeze, but clerical positions are.

“We have this hiring freeze in place in order to control our finances,” he said. “And if people are going to do things to go around it and subvert the court, to me, it’s kind of a slap to the court,” Ivy said.

Justice Ben Cross said he felt the ordinance restricted the ability of department heads to staff their departments.

“These are already budgeted, approved positions,” he explained. “If you look at all the exclusions, basically who this applies to is clerical and administrative staff, which by the very nature of the county budget seem to be the lower paid people in the county. And so, it would appear to me that this is just a, I guess, micromanagement attempt to control different departments that should be controlled by the elected department heads.”

Justice R.E. Hodges questioned the need for a hiring freeze during a time when the county has a surplus fund in excess of $1 million.

The amendment to the hiring freeze garnered only six of the seven votes needed to pass, with justices Jackie Heflin, James Kusturin Jr., Doug Skelton, Blake Tarpley, T.J. Curtis, Cross and Hodges voting against the measure.

The original hiring freeze remains in place.

In other business Thursday, the court approved a request by Sheriff Aaron DuVall to fill a vacant receptionist position. DuVall said attempts to leave the position unfilled led to backlogs in other areas of the department.

Justices Ivy and Mary Metz-Blaylock voted against the request.

The court unanimously approved the appointment of justices Tarpley and Hodges to the Downtown Russellville Steering Plan Committee.

Also on Thursday, Pope County Judge Jim Ed Gibson’s appointments to the county’s 911 Advisory Board were unanimously confirmed by the court.